if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
by makapedia
Summary: If we die we die cool. Soul Eater AU.


They become partners when they're twelve.

Well, Ray's thirteen, but only just barely. It's three days after his birthday when they shake on it and go to Lord Death to seal the deal. It's funny, Emma thinks, how easy it is to tie herself to another person for presumably the rest of her life. Funny, because usually these sort of decisions are left for adults to decide - marriage and the like.

But Emma is only halfway through twelve when Ray becomes her partner. A demon bowblade. It's so laughably goth and unlike her that when she tells Norman about it, he presses his lips together and makes a funny face. They're admittedly an odd pair, but they also make sense, she thinks, in a weird sort of way. Ray is about her age and they're about the same height and, though Ray likes to snarl and glare and roll his eyes, more often than not he can be found in the library, which is also one of Emma's favorite places to frequent.

He has dark hair and darker eyes, but there's something about him that Emma finds herself drawn to anyway. It's not scary, when he looks at her - it's _not - _even if she has a sneaking suspicion he wishes it was.

But she is a meister without a weapon. And he is a weapon without a meister. Two halves of a whole. Gears of a well-oiled machine.

Emma signs her name on the dotted line. Ray signs beneath her. And so they are partners.

.

The first time they resonate Emma cries.

Ray notices, even if she doesn't. The thrill is too great, the steady humming of his wavelength, buzzing from demonsteel, vibrating within her chest - she can't help but scream, can't help but lunge forward. The heat burning her eyes doesn't even register. There's too much to pay attention to - the pre-kishin, greedily licking human blood from their talons, the overwhelming sensation of Ray's soul sparking against hers, the sound of Ray's voice in the back of her head, urging her to _go, hurry, __**release. **_

Bow turns to blade and Emma brings her arms down, and he's weightless in her hands, for the first time. But she is not. She is hardened edges, and the flames of his blade cut through demon flesh so cleanly that she trips on the way down, wobbling on unsteady knees.

Ray is still part way between steel and boy when he's putting his hands on her shoulders and _shaking _her. "Why didn't you stop, idiot-"

Emma can't find her own breath. It doesn't matter. She shakes her head and pushes him back, grabbing at him, his jacket, gasping, "We did it, I knew we could do it-!"

"You're _crying,_" he scolds, wiping her damp face with the hem of his sleeves.

And so she is. But she is also a meister, and so Emma sniffles and grins anyway, even through the tears. "We did it!"

Then she voms right on his Doc Martens.

.

Cohabitation is perhaps the hardest thing for her to get used to.

Ray isn't unkind, but he's a boy of few words. He doesn't waste his breath with unnecessary chatter, nor does he bother sugar-coating things. Emma, on the other hand, is extroverted and enthusiastic, and so it's often at home, when it's just the two of them, that the rub begins. They are thirteen, and Ray locks himself in his room every chance he gets, and only comes out when it's his turn to cook dinner or to do his laundry.

Meanwhile, Emma works to make this house a home, even if it's a dingy school-sanctioned apartment. She paints sprawling life art with Norman on the weekends and sticks command hooks on any empty wall that's left to hang her plants and Christmas lights. It's depressing, to live trapped by four white walls, to spend her days doing her homework and studying weapon-meister dynamics under the poor illumination of fluorescent lights. At least this way she can surround herself with color and pretend like she lives a normal life.

It's weird. The walls are paper thin. She can hear Ray breathe in the next room over, can hear the music singing from his headphones from the kitchen.

Emma taps her eraser on her notebook and glances out the window.

This attachment she feels is so hard to grapple with. He's _hers_, she supposes, in the most platonic sense of the word. He's hers, in that he is her weapon partner, and would die for her, she knows, because that is what the academy has begun to teach him. And it scares her, sometimes, how readily Ray accepts this duty that has been bestowed upon him, surely without his consent.

It's without _her_ consent. Death is such an ugly, terrible thing to delegate to somebody, anybody - and Emma wonders, not for the first time, if she will ever get used to this new life she lives, here in Death City.

.

Resonance isn't any easier after the first time.

Even just in training, Emma struggles with it. She shouldn't. It's just Ray, after all, that she has to open herself up to, to allow entrance into her soul - and, well, Emma doesn't feel like she really has anything to hide. Ray can know that she's never met her mother. She's told him before, anyway, the night they'd become partners, because it felt right to try and bond with her new partner.

But it's like colliding soul-first with a wall. It knocks the breath out of her. Emma stumbles back and lands in the dirt, and Ray's human again in a moment's notice, kneeling before her, head tilted, brows furrowed.

And Emma gets it, just like that. "You won't let me in!"

He keeps his expression carefully measured. "No."

"Yes!" She points a shaking finger right in his face. "What's the deal? We're partners! We're supposed to be able to do this by now! Everyone else can - Gilda and Don have been doing it for like, months now, and yet we still can't-!"

"You threw up the last time we resonated," Ray says, far too sensibly for Emma's liking. He slaps her hand away without much force. "It messes with you."

"But I can't get used to it if you keep holding back on me like this!"

"Who said I'm holding back?"

He's so guarded. It makes her want to shake him. Blood burning, Emma roars and grabs ahold of her weapon and pulls, and _Ray_, of weak ankles and bibliophile tendencies, falls like a leaf in the summer breeze.

It's so easy to pin him beneath her. But she supposes it makes sense; Emma spends her lessons learning how to throw punches and dodge roll and general strength training, and she has the scars and calluses to prove it - but instead Ray learns tactics and strategy. Instead, Ray learns when it is best to shift back to a boy and take the blow for her, learns how to control his transformations and how to best aid her in battle.

It's maddening. Emma pins his wrists to the grass with utmost ease.

"You're holding back!" she insists, soul blazing. Can he feel it? Can he feel her? "If we're going to be partners then we have to communicate with each other, or else I can't protect you-"

"The weapon protects the meister," he says dryly. "Don't get it twisted, idiot."

"You're the idiot!" She ought to slap him. "Why would I open myself up to somebody who's just destined to die for me? What kind of person would I be if I let someone die like that?"

He blinks and doesn't respond. Looks up at her with those dark eyes, half-lidded, as the sunlight shifts overhead. But she has herself planted so comfortably right in front of him that he doesn't have to worry about squinting - he has no excuse not to look her in the eye.

"You can find another weapon if you want," he says, and even as he does, she can still pick out the difference in his tone. There's a tightness there, even if he tries to keep it bored and indifferent. A tightness she might not have noticed a year ago, when they'd first locked themselves into this rhythm. "Nobody's keeping you here. If it's too hard you can go talk to Norman and see if he can lend one of his weapons to you-"

"Don't be stupid!"

He does squint, now, at her. "Don't spit on me."

"I'll spit on you if I want to spit on you!" Her grasp tightens on his wrists. "And you can spit on me if you want to, too - we're in this _together, _you stupid, _stubborn_ martyr, and I don't care about whatever you're afraid I might see or hear when we're resonating or whatever - we're partners, Ray!"

But he's unflappable. Hardened marble. He blows his long bangs out of his eyes and looks up at her, regarding her quietly.

Finally, he says, "It's my job to protect you. Don't get that twisted."

If he thinks she wants him to put himself on the line for it, he has another thing coming. Emma takes the pieces of her heart and tries to squeeze them back together, rolling off of him and staring up at the sun, too. They might be shoulder to shoulder but she's never felt further from him - her partner, her roommate, her weapon, her _best friend._ Though it's up in the air whether or not he'll let her call him friend anymore. There's artificial distance now, between them, and Emma is only fourteen and doesn't know how to cross it.

.

She doesn't push it after that.

Ray is fickle. He can't be forced to do anything - he's _stubborn,_ maybe even more-so than she is, and though it frustrates her to no end that they keep collecting souls banking on brute force alone, she doesn't push him. He's sort of like a cat, she thinks, and if she doesn't allow the freedom to come to her, then he will never trust her at all.

It's hard. She'd had a taste, once, of what it was like to be tethered to her partner like that. A rush of blood, and she'd felt powerful like never before, with his soul vibrating in her chest, so closely braided with hers that it was impossible to tell where she ended and he began. With power like that, Emma finally felt like she could make a difference. Like the two of them could've been unstoppable.

She clenches and unclenches her fists. Misses, not for the first time, the cool steel of his weapon form, and how he felt in her hands.

As if she'd ever ask for anyone else. Who did he think he was? Ray wasn't replaceable, even if he was private and nervous about sharing something so personal with her. They'd already been tied together anyway. They'd both signed their names on that death sentence.

.

"Dinner's ready," Ray says, poking his head into the living room.

Emma looks up to catch his retreating form and smiles despite her anxieties. He's got her apron on, the yellow one with hasily-finger painted daisies on it, and then she trots after him, stomach rumbling.

.

For Ray's fifteenth birthday, they slay their eighty-ninth pre-kishin and then head to get burgers for a late dinner. It's 9 PM on a Thursday night and Emma's still picking dried demon blood out from under her fingernails when Ray drops the tray onto the table before her.

She glances up and her stomach is already rumbling. "Did you get chicken nuggets too?"

"How could I forget," he says, sliding into the booth next to her. There's plenty of room on the side across from her, but Emma decides to let it go without teasing him - it's his birthday, after all, and so his meister feels gracious.

Besides. It doesn't bother her any if they bump elbows while they shovel burgers into their faces. It's nice, to be this close to him, without any pretenses, without having to play the roles of child soldiers. Emma quite likes pretending to be a normal teenager, and quite likes the crooked smile Ray shoots her when she pulls birthday candles out from her jacket pockets and begins sticking them into the bun of his burger.

"Sorry, they only came in packs of ten," she says apologetically, then nudges him with her shoulder. "Gimme a light, would you?"

"What, am I just a walking matchbox to you?"

"Is my widdle butterknife feeling underappreciated?"

Ray snorts but grins all the same. He leans forward, fingers shifting in a flash of blue to steel, and then the birthday candles spring to life. They burn long enough for Emma to put a hand on his chest and force his back against the cushion of the booth they're sitting in, long enough for her to sing _happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Raaaaay, _and then she tries not to think about the way she watches his mouth as he closes his eyes and makes a wish.

She's left watching the smoke fizzle as Ray begins picking candles out of his food. No matter; she has a pile of chicken nuggets with her name on it.

.

"I don't think he wants to resonate with me," Emma confesses one night.

It's after hours in the library, and Ray has already headed home to start dinner forty minutes ago. From across the aisle, Norman regards her hesitantly, clearly choosing his words carefully.

Finally, he says, "I don't think that's the problem."

"Has he told you that?" she whines, back sliding against a shelf of books. She sits there and hugs her knees to her chest, setting her chin there and staring pointedly ahead. "I don't know how to talk to him about it without freaking him out or making him shut down on me. I want to mind his boundaries, and- and if he doesn't want to, I guess that's fine, I just want to know!"

Norman takes three steps and crosses the distance between them with long, sure strides. He's gotten taller, recently, and even Ray struggles to keep up with him these days. Still, he's still the same old Norman on the inside, she thinks - because he still sits down next to her, close enough to offer a shoulder but still far enough not to bump elbows. Mindful, as always, of her boundaries.

"He hasn't," he says, and he's not looking at her, either. They both stare at the romance section in quiet dread. "I think he's too afraid to try."

Ray would literally rather eat his eyeliner collection than admit to fear. Emma hums thoughtfully and bites her lip.

"I think he cares a lot about what you think and doesn't want you to feel like he's incapable of being a good weapon," Norman continues. He extends his legs and sits straight, and his feet reach the end of the aisle with relative ease. "I'd feel the same way. I can't imagine what it must be like, to feel so protective all of the time, and actually be there on the battlefield with you."

"But if we don't resonate we'll never have a chance against a witch!"

"I don't think Ray cares very much about being a Death Scythe, you know."

Emma huffs and plops her head on his shoulder. "I wish he did. I worry he doesn't want much of anything."

The sound Norman makes is almost sad. "He wants plenty of things."

"I _wish _he felt comfortable talking about those things."

Norman almost laughs, but instead leans his head against hers, too, and they sit there, contemplative and thoughtful for a long moment. Emma wonders if Norman can even give her proper advice on this particular topic - Norman is a meister too, after all, and even if he resonates with his partners, he could never understand what it was like on the other side. Neither of them could. How different it must be, to be the one being wielded, to be the one cutting through demonflesh on the nightly, to be expected to open yourself up to your meister, so that your partnership could be further weaponized.

.

Gradually, slowly, they work on it.

Ray and Emma collect ninety-nine pre-kishin souls over the course of three years. It's only when they take the bounty on a witch's soul does the seal finally begin to break, and then Emma's sitting across from Ray on his bedroom floor in an oversized sleep shirt and knee-high socks, taking his face in her hands and pulling him to her.

It's intimate, the way nothing else ever has been. His forehead is almost clammy against hers, and even like this, she can still taste his anxiety on her tongue. Even like this, without proper resonance, she can still read between his lines. It's like he's a magnet and she can't seem to pull away cleanly without feeling inevitably drawn to him anyway.

"Easy," she says, soothingly. "This is _easy. _We can do it."

"Shut up," he grunts, but his hands are on her elbows, and they're trembling, "I should be saying that to you, stupid-"

"I trust you, Ray."

His grip tightens on her. He can't cut her on the blunt edge of that sharp tongue of his - not when he willingly closes his eyes and submits in the same way he always has.

The give and pull is equal. They are two halves of a whole, these days. Emma slips in between the cracks and Ray pulls up her slack, and they fall into one another, a comfortable, lazy hum of a connection, but it's something. She hears, "_stupid," _in the back of her head, more fondly than she can fathom.

.

But it's not enough.

Brute force would've never been enough, she thinks, narrowly dodging the claws of the owl witch - but still, they'd been stubborn enough to hope.

Or optimistic. Or whatever. Emma ducks and nearly trips over her boots - her new boots, a birthday present from Ray, a pair she hasn't quite grown into yet. She can hear him cursing under his breath, his voice tingy from within the metal in her palms, as she rolls back.

"We have to run," he says.

"But we're so close!" Emma yelps, then scrambles back to her feet as the witch lunges at her, wings glinting purple in the lowlight of the night. The cobblestone path beneath her feet feels more jagged than ever, and Emma can't remember a time when she actually felt afraid in Death City. "It'll be so much harder if we run now-"

"DUCK!"

He raised his voice. He never raises his voice. She should know it means things are serious; and it's odd, that Ray raising his voice makes her realize that things are dire, and not the fact that the witch's claws graze the side of her head and leave a pretty nasty cut.

Ears ringing, Emma swipes at her with the side of Ray's blade and stumbles back. Vaguely, she can hear his fretting, and it's only through the sheer adrenaline pumping through her veins that she finds it in her to keep going. The sting barely registers - there is only the concerned, anxious hum of Ray's soul, so close to hers and yet so far, and they're not quite good enough yet to strike that match on command and combust. There's too much pressure, in the moment, and even as he's extending a hand out to her, and her heart feels like it might burst, Emma can't find the tempo of his rhythm, can't sing along.

"Run, idiot!"

_Idiot._ She sends the witch back with a kick to the ribcage and then slices at her again, to no avail. "Resonate with me again!"

"I've been trying to, you stupid- Emma!"

.

It happens too fast. She's still so preoccupied with trying to chase that ever-elusive end of his thread that she doesn't notice what's going on around her. In the split second before the claws come down, Ray has already shifted from steel to bone, and then he's her shield, in the most heartbreaking, literal sense. Even though he is weapon half of the time, he still bleeds red when he falls.

.

The world they live in is mad.

.

"I just- I never wanted you to get hurt because of me, and I don't- I wish I could've taken the hit for you! I wish you would've _let _me," she cries, _actually _cries, and Ray looks paler than she's ever seen him as he watches from his hospital bed. "I wish you'd let me protect you."

Ray says nothing for a long time. He looks almost shell-shocked, sitting there in a hospital gown, sweaty hair pressed to his face as he watches her cry. It's unlike her, and maybe that's why he's so surprised by it. She cries, sure, over videos of puppies, and she sheds momentarily pained tears over stubbed toes and bitten tongues, but never like this. And the longer it goes on, the deeper the blade seems to sink into her chest, the more solemnly he looks at her.

What is there to say? "I'm sorry," she manages, finally, scrubbing at her face. "I'm sorry, I should've listened to you-"

"I should've listened to you," he mutters, voice cracking. "You've been saying for years that we've needed to resonate more and I didn't listen to you."

"That doesn't matter!" She stands, then, and rounds his hospital bed. Emma drags her chair away from the window and plants herself next to him, blood burning, throat tight, and the next breath she takes shakes her just as deeply as it soothes her. Gathering her courage, Emma faces him head on, headstrong, the meister she's been trained to be, and says, "I don't care what anyone else says. If you don't want to do it we don't have to do it. You're more important to me than any stupid set of rules. We don't have to hunt another witch ever again."

"We do," he says quietly.

"Not if you don't want to be a Death Scythe!" She takes his hand in hers and squeezes it, and some color returns to Ray's face, just barely - he burns a little pink, but it's nice to know there's still life in those bones somewhere. Emma thinks nothing of it and instead feels glad that her weapon still has enough blood in him to blush. "We can find a way-"

"We _do _have to_,_" he says again, "because it matters to you. You want to help, right? It matters to you. You want to change the world we live in. You want to make a difference."

But more than that, she wants him to be okay. Wants to wake up tomorrow to his sleepy eyes and messy bedhead and think _this is the life._ This is _her_ life.

"Resonate with me," he says. "Now."

"But you're-"

He laces his fingers between hers and stares at her, just the same as she'd done to him. Her breath catches in her throat and she thinks, _this is my partner, _and falls into his step, easy as breathing.

.

She hears him sometimes when she's trying to sleep.

It's sort of like having an encyclopedia in her brain. Ray's white noise is almost anxious in nature. He goes over things over and over again, until he's got them memorized, and then he moves on. Sometimes it's stuff like his homework or something he's read and found interesting, but sometimes they're things about her, like what she'd worn today, when she has a particularly important test coming up, or what she likes for dinner, because it's his turn to cook tomorrow.

It's as endearing as it is embarrassing. But it's also nice, in a weird way, to know her partner thinks about her just as often as she thinks about him. And he must know that by now. They keep a low level of resonance at all times, just in case.

And it's comfortable, in a weird way. It's like he's always right there beside her even when he's not. The longer it goes on, the more the voice in her head sounds like Ray - nagging, deadpan Ray - but it's not unwelcome. He evens her out, she thinks. Makes her step back and look at things more closely before diving in headfirst, and that's good for her. She only hopes that she can offer the same for him - that maybe her optimism bleeds through their connection, and that when he's feeling down on himself, the little voice in his head that sounds like her will remind him that she thinks he's great, no matter what.

Emma rolls over in bed and pins her face between her pillow and her mattress. Even now, she can still hear him muttering, caught in between that place of conscious thought and sleep: _school dance is next week, school dance is next week, I should ask Emma what she wants to do. _

.

"I like that color on you."

Ray chuffs and pushes her head away. "Whatever."

But the blush colors the back of his neck anyway, and even if it didn't, she can _feel _how pleased he is with himself from where she stands. They don't need words to express that, not when she knows him, soul-deep. Not when they have this connection between them, a bond that tethers them deeper than any written contract or agreement ever could. For the first time Emma really _gets _why he'd been so hesitant to resonate with her, why he'd kept her at an arm's length distance at all times.

Ray glances at her from over his shoulder. Emma presses mute on her brain and toddles after him, clumsy, even in kitten heels, and Ray links his arm around her elbow as if it's natural.

And she supposes it is.

They're partners, in every sense of the word. Even if she doesn't quite understand the depth of that yet. But it's okay, she thinks, even if it's a little scary being bonded to him like this - it's okay, because even if she has scars down the side of her face and even if her ear really doesn't work the way it used to, Ray still never treats her any differently. It's okay, because deep down he's still Ray, no matter how tall he gets, no matter how pretty his jaw ends up.

He's still Ray, and the shape and the form has never mattered, not really. He's _hers_, and she's his, and whatever that means, they'll tackle that together.

"Your brain is so _loud,_" he mumbles, nudging her with his shoulder. The blush runs deep, now, burning to the tips of his ears, and Emma grins and bumps him right back.


End file.
